Aligning integrated ecosystem assessment with adaptation planning in support of ecosystem-based management

Supporting resilience is a common goal of natural resource management, but managing under changing conditions that requires adaptation is a modern challenge. A state-of-the-art framework for implementing an integrated ecosystem assessment (IEA), the NOAA IEA approach, is used as an example to demonstrate whether and how assessment in ecosystem-based management (EBM), as often implemented in fisheries, can be expected to facilitate planned adaptation. Using comparisons with another assessment framework developed for implementing a climate change adaptation project, the United Nations Development Programme-Global Environment Facility Adaptation Policy Framework (UNDP-GEF APF), this paper expands and operationalizes the concepts of managing for resilience versus change in EBM as presented by West et al.(2009). It first introduces a variety of terms from climate change adaptation literature to help institutionalize “planned adaptation” as a useful concept within fisheries, then presents an expanded map of adaptive management processes in EBM. Finally, it proposes steps for enhancing processes supporting planned adaptation in individual applications of EBM in fisheries. Steps include (i) recognizing interest and funding for adaptation planning as prerequisites, (ii) evaluating what information or actors are lacking to implement better planning, and (iii) determining what institutional processes within an adaptive management cycle need augmentation.